


A Kind of Game

by atomtom



Series: Moral Support [1]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Crime Fighting, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, M/M, gayperion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 05:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12149865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomtom/pseuds/atomtom
Summary: Supervillains Rhys and Timothy meet their new arch nemesis in an unexpected visit.





	A Kind of Game

"Hello, Rhys."  
   

A chill ran through him as he jerked himself upright, looking across the vast floor of his hideout to where the voice had come from.  
     

"That _is_ Wireframe's real name isn't it?"   
     

An intimidating figure stepped out of the shadows, the echo of her boot heels hitting clicking against the metal was enough to put him on edge. Commissioner Kadam stood in front of him, per her signature informality that just radiated arrogance.  With her hands resting over the holsters of her belt he didn't dare try anything, knowing she'd shoot him first.  The confident, sadistic smile on her face- she knew she had him trapped.  They stared each other down, waiting to see who would make the next move.  
     

She cut the tension.  
     

"I can hurt you or you can come quietly, your choice."  
     

Rhys slowly got up on his feet from where he was sitting.  
     

"And hands where I can see ‘em."  
     

Rhys complied, walking up to meet her.  Gently he lowered his arms to rest on her shoulders, pulling her closer and fondly brushing some of her hair back.  The commissioner's expression softened into something sweeter, what could even be described as bashful.  
     

"Hey, Tim."  Even behind the full obstruction of his blank white mask, Rhys’s smile showed through his voice.   
     

Timothy snickered, "How'd you know it was me?"  
     

"C'mon!” Rhys released Timothy from his loving claws, “She would have just shot me."  
     

Tim sighed, "Yeah that's true..." He shifted into his usual, lanky freckled self.  Rhys did a smug little swivel on his heel as he began walking back to his seat.    
     

"You didn't have backup either," he chided.  
    

"I can only do so much," Tim threw his hands up in defeat.  
    

"I will say though you were very convincing, you had me played for a good while there.  Nice choice of character too, if anyone would find this place- super or a fed- I think it'd be her."  
     

"Thank you," Timothy purred. "So what have you been up to?"  
    

"Oh, not much," Rhys hopped back up on his seat, laying across it so he could prop his feet up, "Just finished up the...jellyfish...thing.  Could you make sure it's tuned up correctly, it's exhausting trying to focus after working on something that huge." He motioned over to an interface panel next to a contraption about twenty feet in diameter resting on the floor.  
     

"Of course." Tim was familiar with the technology, he’d been asked to help work on it several times before.  After a few minutes of checking initial diagnostics he spoke again.  
     

"Sir...it seems you've been assigned a new nemesis. It’s been all over the news."  
     

"Is that right?" Rhys sighed as he materialized a holo-screen from his right hand to look at.  He wasn’t hopeful about this one.

 

It'd been rather uneventful the past few weeks after he had totally run the last hero assigned to him out of town.  Lately the nemeses were...not good to say the least.  Most of them were newbies he could scare easily, or they were the wrong kind of people for hero work.  In that case, he either convinced them to give it up or- if they were really bad- it would be his judgement to dispose of them.  These days they'd give anyone a suit and it was really starting to show.  Most of the older heroes, the system ones at least, had a hold on their powers that made them an actual threat to supervillains.  Now that a most of them retired and became kind of celebrities, or if they died which was sometimes the case, the government was a lot less picky about who could defend their cities. Rhys was beginning to get bored, and his plans to destroy Handsome Jack kept getting delayed by these amateurs.    
      

Rhys pulled up his feed and almost immediately found an article titled with the headline 'New Hero to Attempt to Take on Wireframe'.  Rhys snorted, reading it aloud.  
      

"You hear that? 'Attempt' is the word they use."  
      

"Well we have been having a bit of a dry spell," Tim replied cheerily.  
       

It was almost audible how hard Rhys rolled his eyes behind his mask, "That's one way to put it." He continued reading the article, "'After several months of defeats to renowned supervillain Wireframe, new up and coming superhero, Madcap, is slated to battle him after the resignation of the villain's former assignment.' Huh." He scrolled down the rest of the page. "Doesn't seem very hopeful.  Yeesh it's like they expect this guy to kick the bucket.  Have you heard of him, Tim?"  
        

Tim had his back turned on Rhys, being preoccupied helping calibrate their newest piece of tech, "Nope.  He's a nobody to me, and from a little digging I did no one else knows who he is either. There isn't even like, small town papers that have anything on him. Hey- uh, do you want me to make this thing good to go like, _now_ ?"   
        

"Can you do that?" Rhys sat up, turning to look over to where Tim was working.   
         

Timothy shrugged, "The meter you made says you can."  
         

"Huh," he lied back down,"I thought the fuel cells wouldn't be ready by now, but yeah why don't you just do it now, you never know when someone's gonna be busting up in here." He waved his hand dismissively in Tim's direction.  
           

Tim finished adjusting a few numbers then activated the power.  Behind the control panel a large machine that resembled a flying saucer levitated off the ground.  The device had thick, glowing cables that loosely hung down along the rim as a means of latching and grabbing onto things.  
         

"Jellyfish is ready, sir!" Tim piped enthusiastically.  
       

"We really need to come up with a better name for that thing," Rhys muttered, "Hey and- you don't need to call me sir all the time you know that right?"  
        

"Sorry, it's just habit," Tim chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.  
        

"But yeah back to the hero thing, that's weird right? This guy doesn't pull up any results," Rhys had opened up multiple screens and was looking through several informational outlets. No articles, no forum threads, not even photos so there wasn't any way to run a face scan through security cameras. There were a lot of hits for "masked vigilantes" but that could be anyone.  
       

"Yeah really weird."   
       

"Maybe he didn't even have an official name until he became a suit...but you know even if you're moonlighting after a nine to five you usually call yourself _something_ even if you're changing it up every week.  Y'know?” Rhys was baffled and slightly impressed how someone could stay under the radar for so long, “And people like that namedrop that shit everywhere for publicity." He threw his hands up in the air, "I don't get it."   
      

"No, no I know what you're saying!" Tim walked up to Rhys's chair and leaned over the high backing to look down at him.  "It's not typical."  
     

"Guess we'll have to get his specs straight from the registry," Rhys said, pulling up a screen connected to the government's private hero dispatch database.  Every document concerning a registered suit was filed in here _somewhere_ so if they didn't find out who he was here, they wouldn't be able to find it anywhere.   
      

Rhys hummed as he searched for anything related to Madcap.  When his query went through he found a grand total of...two pieces of paperwork.   
       

Even then, one of those documents was just the formal agreement every hero had to sign that said the government had no responsibility for them other than providing free healthcare and not convicting for working reasonably outside the law.  Rhys always thought it was a piece of work, for better or worse. It certainly had some history behind it. Boiled down to just a few bare essentials, this was the document after almost a century of perfecting it.  Back in the twenties, post WWI when it had become apparent supers were becoming increasingly weaponized, the government had started the hero program hoping the supers that joined would be seen as model citizens and other people would be inspired to play their role in society, of course tinged with the expected patriotic bullshit.    
     

The initial agreement was too rigid though, the government had to micro-manage what had become known as the three P's: publicity, property damage, and punishment. All that was fine when it was only four or five big heroes running around but it was obvious the protocol was becoming overwhelmingly expensive as more hero teams were added to the roster. What really pushed them over the edge to revise the hero contract was how the situation actually got worse in the following decades. Soon, wildly overpowered supervillains, anarchists, criminals, and people who generally just wanted to raise hell were coming out of the woodwork. On top of that, the suits the government hand-picked weren't always the most upstanding people.  Generally they got in due to two factors, which were the capacity to weaponize their abilities and their lack of connections.  It was to ensure that they'd be more willing to do dangerous work, not that a fat paycheck wasn't also persuasive.  There was a general anxiety that developed the following decade over how the government had at their disposal the some of most powerful people in the world.  
     

People didn't _trust_ heroes, and really in all technicality they were mercenaries.  The program took a particularly hard blow in the 30's during the Depression.  Tensions were already high due to citizens demanding funding cuts for societal necessities and most heroes being dismissed from duty, but an incident in 1935 really drove the nail in the coffin.     
     

One of the most prolific heroes of the time as well as rich socialite, Silverstrike, double-crossed her squadron, agreeing to kill them off in exchange for several million dollars.  It took a full week before anyone realized they were gone and she had slipped away into life as a full fledged villain.  The bodies were found frozen and impaled on stakes of ice in their headquarters and the scandal only gave people evidence that the program should be disbanded completely.   
     

Seemingly on its last leg, the hero program decided to lay low for a while and do a complete overhaul.  Then in the 50's it was reinstated, but as a voluntary program still regulated by the government.  Enough time had passed that nostalgia for the glamour of superheroes was beginning to show itself and was taken advantage of.  The pay was modest  enough so that it would weed out anyone just out for money, at least it initially did.  Another aspect stressed in the second wave of hero work was that heroes weren't limited to their powers.  A lot of the greats had powers considered defensive or supportive, but because they used them in ways no one expected, they were popular.  That was the message; _anybody_ can be a hero. It did wonders for the program's image.   
      

It was around this period between the second and third waves that being a suit became known as "civil service Hollywood”.  If people liked you, you practically became a movie star, sometimes literally if you got picked up for a film deal.  Even B or C list heroes could usually pay the bills with the publicity events they did and have a bit left over if they were popular.  Eventually the government figured out they could phase out compensation for hero work completely; people were attracted to the lifestyle enough to get on board.   
      

The system worked for a while, it was efficient for civilian crime like bank robbers, and shooters, but super crime is where the bureaucracy slowed things down.  Still having to work within the law often meant heroes had to use non-lethal force, not something they always thought supervillains deserved.  It led to a surge in vigilante work, a movement that usually attacked the hero program for not taking enough action.  There were relatively few kingpin villains at the time though, so they went largely unheard until the tech boom of the 90's.  The widespread use and  accessibility of electronics led to many people finding that they had the affinity for hypertech.  There were multiple cases of people having to be neutralized because they went on power trips and contracted their work out to supervillains.    
     

The sudden rise in hypertech gave villains an edge; suddenly everyone had something capable of taking out heroes.   _Every_ supervillain became high priority.  It was quickly realized it couldn't be afforded to send squads after someone where it was easy to take them all out at once.   What's more was that maintaining a moral policy became unrealistic against enemies that didn't play by the rules.  So it was decided it was time to revise the program again.   
       

Thats where the current document came in.  It separated hero work from the state so that suits could get their hands dirty. It was also when heroes began to be limited to fighting villains generally one on one.  There was an interesting phenomenon that developed from this; supervillains would _like_ fighting certain heroes repeatedly.  As soon as it was evident that was a _thing_ the informal "nemesis program" was designed.  Heroes were requested to frequently fight villains matched up based on a psychological profile and how well their powers complimented each other.  The game kept villains busy.   
      

Honestly what mattered to Rhys was just the last page.  Usually- if they were smart- the signature at the bottom would just be a placeholder mark like a dash so it couldn't be traced and sure enough that's what it was.    
     

Rhys put the contract aside and focused on the more important of the two documents: the dossier.  
    

"Wow he really is a newbie," Tim had tilted his head down to read the date the contract was signed and it was only several days ago.  
     

"Yeah..." Rhys replied.  He sounded slightly irritated reading through Madcap's profile.  
      

"Whatcha thinking?" Tim smiled softly, reaching down to gently play with Rhys' hair.  
      

Rhys blew a raspberry, "I have no idea who this guy is, they haven't even added a photo of him." Listed on the paper was his codename, powers and colors.  They stopped listing heroes' secret identities after the third revision of the program realizing it was more of a liability to have it on file where people like Rhys could find it. "Powers: Augmented Strength, senses, and reflexes.  Colors: Maroon and green. Tim that's _it,_ " he whined.   
      

"Sounds like your run of the mill super-soldier," he rested his hand on Rhys's shoulder, "Nothing you haven't seen before."  
      

"I know. Just..." he swiped the screens out of the air, "I just like knowing what I'm up against."  
      

"I know you do. It'll be fine."  
      

At that moment the security system alarm went off.  
      

"Speak of the devil..." Rhys muttered.  He sat up, pulling up the camera feed to the entrance tunnel and the security system's intruder tracker. "Who the..." Rhys squinted at the person on the screen.  He wore a red outfit, close fitted around the top in the typical superhero fashion but baggier pants- to make it easier to move Rhys presumed.  His cowl covered his eyes and framed the sides of his face, wrapping around just his neck so his hair stuck out.  Along the sides there were dark green accent lines. "How'd he even find this place?" Rhys annoyedly watched him wander a little bit around the space in front of the first door, surveying the lock system. "You know we'll have to change the entrance after this," he looked up, telling Tim.  
    

"Oh, I know."   
    

Their entire base was carved out of a material of Rhys's own invention, a kind of malleable nanotech solution that behaved like a solid or a liquid at his will.  It was useful for rapid machine building and modifying spaces if it was needed.  
    

Rhys leaned forward, pushing his face to rest against his palm, "What _are_ you?" Then he did something that surprised Rhys; he looked up directly at the camera and smiled just before walking below it and out of view.  A few moments later Rhys flinched as he saw a split second fist on the feed followed by a flurry of debris before it went black.  "Shit! How'd he even see it that camera's the size of a pinhole!" He focused his attention on the other screen, the blinking red dot moving through the tunnel closer to them.   
     

"How is he doing that? Each of those doors has a more complicated lock!"    
     

"I guess it doesn't matter if you're a literal battering ram." Rhys closed the screens and groaned. He really didn't want to deal with this.  
     

"He's _that_ strong?"   
     

"Apparently," Rhys turned to Tim, "You'd better get ready for a fight."  
     

"Right," Tim transformed himself into the towering, pale blue creature known as Replica.  With his sharp teeth and huge claws he was ready to use them if need be.   
       

Looking irritated as ever, Rhys waited for his new nemesis to step foot through the door.  Legs crossed and chin in hand, he idly tapped his armrest.  No sooner than he heard the creaking of metal and the door being ripped from its casing and being cast aside did he flick his wrist, commanding the floor around the hero's feet to lift him up and engulf him.  
     

Catching him off guard, Rhys could see him struggle.  With a wave of his hand he had the fluid tech bring Madcap forward to where he was sitting.  Rhys had the nanobots solidify, forming restraints around their captive and suspending him upside down.   
      

Madcap had stopped squirming, seemingly resigned to having been caught.  He looked down at Rhys expectantly.  
    

Finally, Rhys said to him, "You're a lot shorter than I expected."  
     

A wide grin spread across Madcap's face and he laughed- _genuinely_ laughed.     
     

"Well we can't all live up to expectations. You on the other hand...you don't disappoint." Rhys raised his eyebrows as the hero went on, "You know when I asked to be assigned to you I had my doubts but you're the real deal."  
     

_He_ **_asked_ ** _for me?_ Rhys thought. _No one asks for Wireframe if they want to last in hero business. Is this guy crazy?_   
     

"And what exactly is the 'real deal'?" Rhys leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.  
      

"Oh I dunno..." he trailed off cheekily, looking over Rhys, "Tall, dark, and handsome?" He grinned.  
       

That made Rhys smile a little under his mask. So Madcap was one of _those_ heroes.   
        

"Replica's not anything to scoff at either," Madcap looked over in time to see Tim's eyes widen a bit in surprise. "You didn't have to throw a party just for me."  
      

Rhys had to admire him, this man was possibly on the brink of being murdered but he could still crack a joke.  
      

"Aren't you scared?" Rhys tilted his head curiously.  
     

Madcap had a small, quiet laugh to himself that seemed to slightly break his character. "To tell you the truth I'm terrified," he replied quietly but recovered quickly, "How are you holding up? You're a little hard to read with the whole mask situation.  Why a full mask anyway? I never got that."  
     

Rhys decided to humor him.  
     

"It's because half my face is fucked up," he replied bluntly.  It wasn’t a lie.  
     

"Wait, so you're telling me you're basically the phantom of the opera?"  
     

Rhys rolled his eyes, "That's not what that means."  
      

"Subterranean lair, messed up face, you even have the flowy cloak thing going on, I think that's what that means."  
      

Rhys grumbled, now regretting he had played along.  He got up from his seat, motioning for Tim to follow, and walked into another room out of earshot.  
    

"What should we do with him?" Rhys whispered, sounding exhausted as he leaned up against the wall.  
     

Tim let out a sigh, shifting back into his previous form. "I dunno, but he's quite the character isn't he," He added cheerfully.  
    

"Tell me about it."  
     

"Wanna just see what happens?"  
     

"I guess," Rhys shrugged noncommittally, "I just don't see how we'll get rid of him."  
     

"Maybe we can just knock him out or something and put him outside, that wouldn't be so bad."  
      

"Yeah," Rhys got off the wall, "yeah sure we can do that."  
      

After Tim made himself more intimidating, they walked out again.  Approaching the suspension that had the hero captured before, they found it empty.  
     

"Where'd he-" Rhys jerked himself around to the jellyfish as he heard the clatter of metal against the floor.  His eyes widened in what could only be described as extreme distress upon realizing that there was a massive hole running through the center of the disc.  He had to watch as the guts of his invention were cored from the inside out. He wanted to scream.    
      

"And after we just fixed it up..." Tim whined.  
      

They saw a fuel cell fly through the air after being ripped out, the glowing, blue fluid inside trailing in an arc as it leaked out.  Moments later they saw Madcap's face pop up from massive hole he made.  
      

"Hey!" He waved at them. "You know the nice thing about being small is..." he climbed out and jumped down onto the floor with a little 'hup' before the machine started to fail and crashed into the ground, "you can wiggle out of a lot of tight spots."  
      

Rhys felt his anger boiling over, his teeth gritted in his mouth.  Around him mechanical components began to materialize out of the ground.  Rhys didn't break his livid glare, his fists balled tight as he willed the technology to connect itself.  It was intolerable; he was just _standing there_ like a dumb child looking back at him.     
      

Then he smiled. A smug, knowing little upturn of this mouth that dared Rhys to do something about it.  
      

"How dare you disrespect me!" Rhys snarled.  
       

He raised his hands, bringing his creations to life; two huge clawed hands floated from off the ground and swiped for Madcap.  
      

The hero deftly jumped above them and out of the way onto a rafter.  
       

"What are you, my dad?" he laughed.  
        

Rhys was done playing games, he sent the claws after the other super, chasing him along the upper walls of the room.  But  Rhys's control wasn't refined enough to outdo Madcap's reflexes.  Every attack he made was met with an acrobatic dodge;  the hero seemed to have an inexhaustible amount of energy, able to stall and use the rafters to his advantage.  
       

Then, with the next swipe, Madcap took him by surprise.  Bending backwards and grabbing the underside of the machine, he used the counterweight to flip up and throw himself directly at Rhys.  
      

As a reflexive action, Rhys's mind abandoned what he had been doing to form a crude shield in front of him.  It was fortunate that he did because Madcap and drawn his weapons- two billy clubs with right angled handles.  The ends of the clubs pierced through, impaling the wall.  Rhys flinched thinking that could be him.  It took Madcap only a split second to dislodge them before breaking down the wall and going into a vicious assault.  
     

It was a smart move on his part, Wireframe wasn't well known for his close combat.  Rhys rapidly formed an armor around his arms, using them to parry against the flurry of hard swings coming at him.  The hero pushed him back to the wall; Rhys's shoulders made a thud as they hit the concrete and knocked the wind out of his lungs.  His arms were crossed above his head, locked in staving off the downward swings of Madcap's clubs.    
       

They were both shaking, the effort of pushing against each other evident.  Their steely eyes locked on each other, sweat running down the sides of their faces.  Madcap smiled as he heard Rhys's breath become short, his arms beginning to buckle in. He was so sure he had Wireframe at his mercy before he felt a sharp pain in his back forcing him to the floor and then a swift kick in the ribs to get him away from the wall.  
    

On his knees, he saw his arms become encapsulated by cylindrical locks, chaining him to the floor.  As he looked up he thought he might have been hit harder than he thought because he saw two Wireframes standing over him.  The one he had been fighting took a gasp of air before he morphed before the hero's eyes, revealing himself to have been Replica.  
     

Madcap figured they had switched within the time he had his weapons stuck.  In retrospect it made sense, he didn't expect Wireframe to be as physically strong as Replica was.  He should have seen it before- he was so close too.  He could have captured one of the world's worst villains and he didn't. Struggling against his restraints he screamed in frustration.  
      

Rhys kneeled down, firmly grabbing his face and forcing his nemesis to look up at him.  The claws of his gloves grazed Madcap's cheek making him twitch.  Rhys did nothing more than look into his defiant eyes and give him a dismissive 'hmph' before turning around to assess the damage that had been done to his project.    
      

"Is that it!" Madcap yelled after him, "That's all you have to say to me? I'm not done!"  
     

Rhys paused, looking over his shoulder, "This fight is over." He continued walking.  
     

"I said I'm not..." he groaned, trying to force himself forward, pulling up the ground around his arms with him, "done!" He hurled the broken locks off his body at Rhys.  They narrowly missed him as Rhys sidestepped the projectiles turning around.  
     

Madcap scrambled to his weapons, replacing them into their sheaths on his back.  Scaling the wall, he launched himself up to swing on a rafter and propel himself towards Rhys.  
       

"Enough!" Rhys raised his hand, a thin spire materializing from the ground and fanning out into two prongs.  As Madcap passed between them he was caught mid air in an a field of glowing, blue energy.  
      

The hero screamed again, wildly striking out into the air. It didn't do much but send him spinning in every direction in his bubble.  Rhys walked away and left him in his rage.  
  
*****   
  
About an hour had passed and Madcap had calmed down, or at least had stopped hurling insults in Rhys and Tim's general direction.     
     

Rhys raised a platform to go talk to him.  
     

Madcap glanced up at him when he approached. "Thought I'd get away with playing the floor is lava," he laughed dejectedly, "Should've thought that through..."  
     

"Why are you treating this like a game?"  
     

The hero looked up again with a small smile and simply answered, "Because you can't kill me."  
     

"And what makes you so sure of that?" Rhys was incredulous.   
     

"Because I'm a good guy."  
     

"I kill people all the time."  
      

"Yeah but not _good guys_ y'know, real heroes."   
      

"What makes you think that's what you are?"  
      

"I'm still alive aren't I?" he smirked.  
      

Rhys stepped closer, taking on an interrogative tone, "You're all the same, what are you in this for? Fame? Money?"  
     

Madcap rolled his eyes, "No."  
     

"Then _what_ ?" Rhys growled.   
    

"I just think people in this world can do better," he shrugged.  
     

"Please," Rhys scoffed  
     

"Or maybe I'm just some crazy who thinks this is fun." He asked a little more gently, "Why are you doing this?"  
     

"Oh don't hit me with that bullshit."  
     

"It's not bull," he said calmly, "Anyway it's only fair since you asked me."  
      

Rhys stared at him a moment.  
      

"Fine. You wanna know? I have a grudge to settle just like every other supervillain ever. Happy now?"  
      

"Are you sure this is the way to do it then? Aren’t there easier ways that don’t involve killing people?"  
      

"Look, there's relatively few people I've actually done that to.  Anyways you said yourself, I don't kill good guys," his claws made air quotes as he said the phrase.  
       

"I never said it was right.  I didn't feel sorry when they died but I wouldn't have killed them."  
       

"And you were just about to kill me?"   
       

"No, just knock you out, I believe people can change.  They at least get a second chance."  
    

"Hmm," Rhys crossed his arms, "Maybe I'm just bitter, but I've seen a lot evidence otherwise." He turned, walking back down and dissolving the platform behind him.    
    

"Oh come on!"  
     

Rhys waved him away, calling back, "Just sit there and look pretty while I work."  
     

Madcap sighed as he watched the villains go back to ignoring him.  He sulked a bit having nothing to do.  Out of boredom he started to spin himself.   _Damn_ he thought looking at the pillars of nanotech imprisoning him _this stuff's so annoying._   
     

He'd seen Wireframe use it in many battles before- everyone had it was practically one of his signature weapons- but not nearly to this extent where there was tons of it. No one could ever really replicate the material let alone have an elegant means of combatting it.  Maybe it wouldn't be a total loss if he could just get his hands on some of it and bring it back for analysis.  
     

He would have to figure out the problem of getting out of this entrapment first. As he started losing momentum and slowing down, he thought he should test something.  
     

Taking out one of his clubs, he reached out with the end in his hand to see if it could stick through the field.  When some of it seemed to be able to escape the blue light unaffected, he had an idea.    
      

Aiming the club at one of the poles generating the field with the end still sticking out, he loosely held the weapon in his hand.  With a forceful butt of his palm he launched his club out of the bubble and shattered the mechanism.  He rolled upon landing, quickly retrieving his club and snagging a piece of the debris for himself.  
      

Tim and Rhys had been focusing on the damage that had been done to the jellyfish and sorting out what parts were still salvageable.  Rhys wanted to bury his face in his hands a number of times because Madcap had been so thorough.  It wasn't a rapid build either; it would have still worked if he didn't focus on it.  This was nearly five months of work down the drain.  
    

They were interrupted when they heard the hero break free.  
     

"Are we gonna stop him?" Timothy asked, not actually worrying too much one way or the other as they both watched him run off.  
     

Rhys shrugged, completely done with this whole ordeal, "We needed him out of here anyway." He reformed the wall over the entrance, "Now to fill up that hole..."  
     

"You know, I kinda liked him."  
     

Rhys sighed, "I guess aside from all the grief he’s caused me, I do too..." It was apparent their work was cut out for them.  Rhys turned back to Tim, patting him on the shoulder, "looks like we have a new nemesis."


End file.
